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Tony's phone buzzed in his jacket pocket, no doubt Abby texting him with more weather updates. Probably nothing he didn't already know from watching ZNN at the gate while the boarding time kept getting pushed back later and later, but he enjoyed the increasingly woeful reaction shots Abby was taking of herself with her phone camera.
Tony sat next to Gibbs and handed over the biggest and meanest coffee he could find without leaving the concourse. Years ago, Tony would've gotten himself a caramel latte and a muffin the size of his head, but these days the treachery of age and a declining metabolism limited him to Vitamin Water and a banana if he wanted to keep fitting into his expensive suits.
"Gotta say," Tony said, glancing around the gate area at a sea of irritable faces, "it's nice having you to myself for once, boss."
Gibbs eyeballed him while drinking his coffee. It took serious coordination. Tony had to hand it to Gibbs; the man was talented.
"Figuratively speaking. Or do I mean metaphorically?"
"Aren't they the same thing?" Gibbs asked. He snapped his fingers and held out his hand. Tony obediently reached into his carry-on and gave Gibbs a woodworking magazine. Over the last eleven years, Tony had done any number of morally dubious things to ascertain and research Gibbs's hobbies and interests for precisely an occasion such as this: stuck waiting for their flight to DC to be canceled due to the disaster movie weather happening outside.
If the magazines didn't work, Tony had cold case files as backup.
"I'm going to take advantage of the fact that we're trapped here to have an awkward conversation," Tony said, because generally it took an act of God for him to corner Gibbs for an uncomfortable discussion about their very manly feelings.
Gibbs didn't say anything, didn't even take his eyes off the magazine, but Tony could tell that he'd momentarily stopped reading.
"Is there a specific reason that you've been throwing women at me? Or more accurately, I guess I should say you're throwing me at them. Still. The question remains."
Gibbs shrugged. "You were the one who brought up family."
Tony stared at him. "I find your interest in my love life alarming. Please stop it."
Tony noticed that Gibbs didn't seem to be agreeing with him, possibly because Gibbs was a devious bastard and Tony's own interest in Gibbs's love life made him a total hypocrite.
"It's interesting," Tony said as he peeled his banana. "Everyone seems to be an expert on what I want without bothering to ask me if I have an opinion on the subject."
Gibbs threw a death glare at the business man sitting behind them who was having an increasingly loud phone conversation about the very important meetings he was going to miss due to weather delay. He dropped the magazine in his lap and stared Tony down.
"What do you want, Tony?"
"A wife and a kid? I'm just saying, you have a narrow definition of family. This may be irony, but I'm not sure. I blame Alanis Morissette," Tony said, evading the question by taking a large bite of banana.
Gibbs shot him an irritable glance, but something on Tony's face caught his eye and held his attention. Tony chewed his banana and tried not to squirm, because being the focus of one of Gibbs's searching looks was never a pleasant experience. Eventually Gibbs sat back in his chair and stared at Tony as if he needed his reading glasses to see him properly.
"They say the best place to hide is in plain sight. What, you didn't know?" Tony asked, laughing at first until Gibbs's expression made him stop. "Wait. You didn't know?"
"No!" Gibbs looked more incredulous than that time McGee had tried to explain My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. That moment had been precious; this one, not so much.
Major disappointments in life tended to result in Tony remaking himself in someone else's image, and while at NCIS, he'd always wondered if his aggressively macho posturing was fooling anyone. He really did need to have more faith in his abilities.
"I'd apologize, but I guess this falls under rule number 42," Tony said quietly, because it was that or hysterical laughter and possibly a segue to Douglas Adams, whose books Tony pretended not to have read whenever McGee was around.
Gibbs was unsettled and cranky. "Wendy?"
That was a loaded question that came with nine years of baggage and Tony's sneaking suspicion that Gibbs didn't know what all the letters in LGBT stood for.
"She was supposed to be my happy ending. If life worked like the movies, which it does not."
"You could try again," Gibbs said.
Married to a teacher with 2.5 adorable children and a home with a white picket fence. That was the ideal, and it was everything Tony had never had growing up.
Tony wasn't sure if he actually wanted that dream, or if it was just what he was supposed to want.
"I'm not the same person I was nine years ago," Tony said.
Gibbs smiled, just a little. "Yeah, you are."
"Okay, let me put it this way. You could sleep on a bed and not the couch," Tony said gently.
"You could mind your own business," Gibbs growled.
Tony snorted and ate the rest of his banana. Then he got more coffee because it looked like the kiosk was shutting down for the night. He handed the coffee to Gibbs and waited a beat to say, "I thought she was the one. And then I met you."
Gibbs squinted. "This a confession?"
"I don't know why everyone thinks you have no sense of humor," Tony said, then nodded at the gate. "Flight's canceled."
"Finally," Gibbs said.
"Maybe I shouldn't have brought this up if we're sharing a hotel room."
Gibbs shrugged. "Not like I haven't seen you naked."
Tony frowned. "This got weird real fast, boss."